Animating in VR · Issue #1 · 2022

About fun in VR, my 2022 animation goals and a new chapter for the newsletter

This is “The Inspired Animator”, a newsletter about my adventures in animation! New tools I discover and experiment with, my failed and proven workflows and occasional tutorials, or behind the scenes of my animations and techniques.

I am making a switch from Mailchimp to Substack, and this will also signify a shift in the purpose of this newsletter.

Previously my newsletter was mostly about keeping you up to date with the writing on my Medium publication The Inspired Animator. While I will continue to write those articles on Medium and still link to them, the focus of this newsletter will be to publish at a stricter interval and provide content that is more personal.

I will share behind the scenes and content that personally inspires me on a biweekly basis. The focus of the Medium publication is for content that is something that is supposed to be less ephemeral and be a resource for animators. This newsletter on the other hand will be like a journal of a long adventure — how I got there, and what influenced me along the way.

I will have to come up with rewards for paid subscribers, at this point it’s just my eternal gratitude. I might have more content or articles specifically for paid subscribers, like an inbetween weekly update. Or a discord community. Or free access to my future products, paid animation classes or more, because they might be in part funded by this very publication. We will figure something out that feels natural.

Welcome to this new chapter, I hope you will enjoy my writings and get inspired yourself!

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Fun with animation in VR

I started animating in VR almost exactly a year ago (January 2021) after I’ve gotten my first Quest 2. I was inspired by it for a very long time due to the creations of amazing VR artists like Goro Fujita who does a VR illustration or animation daily.

Goro Fujita @gorosart

Sci-Fi Metropole - Daily Quillustration animated in VR using Quill, rendered in Redshift

It took me a long time though to get a PC that was capable of handling VR and an actual headset that would work for it. The Quest 2 is actually an awesome entry product right now!

The first step in the Quill, that’s the animation software that we both use, were kind of shaky. It’s an entirely new experience to draw something for the first time in three dimensions. Your mind is not used to it, and it almost feels like learning to draw again.

Thus, it takes a couple of training sessions to get the hang of it. Additionally, Quill itself has an overwhelming set of features that you need to familiarize yourself with over time. I will go deeper into that probably on later occasions.

Before I could get really good at it last year, my Quest 2 broke down. The positional tracking was all over the place and it would shake the hands inside VR which was infuriating… so I stopped and sent it back for replacement. Once it came back, I didn’t actually touch it for half a year.

I only picked it up around November again and started doodling around. Here’s one of my first creations from that time:

justGoscha ⭐️ brings Motion to your business @justgoscha

Some more detailed views of the adventure time piece. #quillustration

VR Animation Goals for 2022

In 2022 I want to take my VR animation to a more serious level and produce a couple of short movies with it. Ranging from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. For that, I need to level up my game one more time and learn to use it even more efficiently. The target medium will still be a normal 2D video without a need for VR equipment to view.

And a first step was to create a first character in VR and then animate it with a run cycle. Here’s an example of the cat I created and made run:

My running little big headed cat…

I also screen recorded the entire creation process. From drawing and modelling the character to animating every frame. I am planning to cut it together and post it to my Youtube channel once I am ready. In general, I have a couple of plans for a new direction of my channel, I will write more on that once it actually happens.

But before that, I will need to create one more thing for this cat animation. And that is the background for this cat to run in. Then I’ll consider this done and I can proceed to attempt my first short film animation if everything goes according to plan.

Here’s my initial blocking out of the landscape:

justGoscha ⭐️ brings Motion to your business @justgoscha

Today, planning out some scenery in VR. It's really fun!😍 Hire me as VR vizdev so I can do this all day😉 #quillustration

I’ll keep you updated!

Animation Inspirations

• 🎬 Movie recommendation: “The House” - Stop motion animation (available on Netflix)

• This was really a visually stunning stop motion movie with a unique atmosphere vaguely remininiscent of animation movies like Coraline, or if Tim Burton would write a story for a “Wes Anderson”-style stop motion animation. It was delightfully creepy and dark, sometimes hilarious with occasional twists.

Other Updates

• 🧵 New thread: I wrote a thread that resonated with a couple of other artists. On how hard it is to be happy when using social media, and why.
  (20 likes is a lot for me, don’t laugh)

justGoscha ⭐️ brings Motion to your business @justgoscha

Why it's so hard to stay happy as an artist using social media. 🧵

• 📘New Article: A new tutorial article for After Effects: How to apply a hand-crafted look to your animations in After Effects — I personally use this kind of “fake hand-animation” effect a lot and wanted to automate my own workflow a little bit, which is why I made this…

• 📦New Product: Along with the tutorial I also shipped the actual presets on Gumroad for $3: Handcrafted Look in After Effects Presets - Boiling Lines & Color

Here’s what the presets do!

And the most important update

• 💍I got engaged to the love of my life. And we’re both really happy, and I was really scared if she would love the ring, or how I would propose and things like that, but it was all wonderful, and we couldn’t stop smiling.

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Thanks for reading!
Stay healthy and inspired!

Goscha